


black holes and revelations

by imperiousheiress



Category: Babel-17 - Samuel R. Delany
Genre: (you know how languagues sometimes have sequels?), Babel-17, Babel-18, Canon Compliant, Danil D. Appleby/OC (mentioned), Gen, Minor Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Rydra Wong/The Butcher (mentioned), Rydra is talked about but does not physically appear, all the relationships are alluded to VERY briefly, at least as much as it could be, canon-specific terminology, past Danil D. Appleby/OC/OC (mentioned), the state of the universe post-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:06:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28148058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperiousheiress/pseuds/imperiousheiress
Summary: The former Customs Officer, who seldom thinks of himself as such – his name is Danil D. Appleby and these days he often goes by Dan – stares back at the person who has just joined him at the two-person table in the corner of the bar and brushes a strand of red hair that has fallen free of his hairtie out of his face.Or:Just over two years after Rydra Wong cracked the secret of Babel-17. In the brief space between traveling the stars, two strangers discuss life, love, and their places in the universe.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	black holes and revelations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FireBatVillain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireBatVillain/gifts).



> Title from Starlight by Muse.

“You’re Customs, aren’t you?” 

A fresh, bubbling glass of _Jupiter Conjunct_ lands on the table in front of him – _clank –_ and he looks up from the first glass he ordered, the one he has yet to finish. He watches, for a moment, the glitter that swirls around in the pink-green liquid, kept in perpetual motion by the chemical reaction that is currently producing the soft, butter-yellow foam that threatens to spill over the edge. The face that watches him from the other side of it is contrarily still. The only thing that keeps the rose-gold stare that is trained on him from tipping straight away from _unsettling_ and into _downright creepy_ is the fact that its owner is at least still blinking.

The former Customs Officer, who seldom thinks of himself as such – his name is Danil D. Appleby and these days he often goes by Dan – stares back at the person who has just joined him at the two-person table in the corner of the bar and brushes a strand of red hair that has fallen free of his hairtie out of his face. 

Getting no further prompt or explanation, he chooses to polish off the rest of his drink and then push the now-empty glass aside to pull the full one closer. He’s not the kind of man who’s just going to turn down a free drink, no matter where it might have come from. 

“Was,” he says. _Past tense indicative._ Key word: past. He briefly wonders how in the universe his mysterious benefactor could possibly have sussed that out – once upon a time it would have been more than obvious, sure, but now he’s sitting alone at a high table in a deadspace Spacer bar with both hands wrapped around a bubbling glass of alcohol in much the same way he once sat behind a desk at Administrative Alliance Headquarters with a pad like a shield between him and the world. His crew, each member with a matching patch somewhere on their clothing bearing the symbol of their ship _Alacrity,_ are gathered at a table not halfway across the building. Many of them wear similar or the same sage-green-brown jacket, himself included – he never thought he’d go in for the style, but it had grown on him at an alarming rate. Certainly they’re the only ones here that look remotely like they belong together, and besides that, their numbers make up nearly half the patrons in the place.

With these factors combined, it should be damn near impossible for anyone, even antlered strangers, to mistake his affiliation.

_Speaking of._ The person who leans both elbows against the opposite side of the small round table from him doesn’t prod for further elaboration and so he doesn’t offer it. Irrationally, impossibly, he thinks that might be the end of it, then. It’s too much to hope, he knows it is, but tonight was supposed to be his night of _quiet._ Not something he gets often in the midst of a journey. 

He takes the first sip of his new cocktail, savoring the way it fizzes against his tongue. The first few drinks, before the chemical reaction runs its course and the bubbles disperse along with all of the drink’s texture, are always the best by _far_ and he’s not going to miss out on savoring them for all they’re worth.

The person across from him takes a seat. So he’s in this for the long haul then.

“I wondered what a Customs Officer would possibly be doing way out on the far side of the Cygnus Arm,” they murmur, dropping their chin into their open palm instead. “That explains it, then. Oh, but I was _so_ sure you–”

“I _was,”_ Dan repeats. “But it’s been… a long time.”

He thinks of the young man he left behind to take his place. An eager thing of barely twenty who had always seemed so small despite always towering over Dan by no small margin. Most importantly, someone he could shape into more than a pair of hands across a datapad. Someone with a brain, who he could trust to think for themselves outside of the Alliance rules and regulations as they appear at face value. If you’d told him _before_ two years ago that he would one day become quite adept at measuring the exact tensile strength needed to pull strings into loopholes, he never would have believed it. But then. There had been _her,_ hadn’t there?

“I _see,”_ the person across the table hums. They wave a finely-manicured hand with ruby red nails – painted and not permanent; he’s only able to tell because he can see the places where the color has begun to chip around the edges – towards a nearby drink server. Just like that, whatever token of hope he might have still held of regaining just this one night off for himself vanishes. Knowing he’s not going to win out in this, he takes a decisive swig of his _Jupiter Conjunct._ **  
**

“So you know enough about Alliance operations to be able to pick a former Customs Officer out of a crowd on what can barely constitute a planetoid in the ass end of nowhere but not enough to deduce that I’m with a crew. The one sitting right over there, in fact.” He lowers the glass and raises an eyebrow, jerking his now-empty hand up to point back over his shoulder with his thumb. “I take it you’re not associated with the Alliance, then…?” A pause, drawn out. The space where a name should be but remains absent. Until–

“Atherton.” Their head tilts to the side, eyes flickering now between him and the rest of the present _Alacrity_ crew. One of a pair of tall-reaching cosmetisurgery rabbit ears twitches atop their head, the same snow white as the hair that falls not quite to their shoulders. A gesture of… something. Something he can’t quite translate, at least not yet.

“Danil Appleby. Dan.” 

“Well, _Dan,”_ the stranger, not so strange anymore, repeats. “I’m not… _not_ affiliated with the Alliance. But neither are you entirely incorrect. It’s true that I have had very few dealings with the inner workings of the system. By fortune’s hand, I have been privileged enough in my life to be able to ignore the wider conflicts of our society, if I so choose.” To be able to ignore the War, they don’t say. They don’t need to. “And ignore them I have at some points, although I take little pride now in admitting it.”

“I can’t fault you for being human.” There is a wry twist to his smile.

The server that Atherton had waved to arrives now at the table that once was Dan’s and now is _theirs._ Hovering on near-silent thrusters, the console screen turns to face Atherton, brightness adjusting automatically so that neither of them needs to squint against it. The glow of it catches just on the fringes of their silkspun hair, lighting it like a beacon. Their attention is focused entirely on where their blood nails peruse the menu, so much so that it takes a second for Dan’s mind to catch up when they speak to him.

“From Customs to Transport… I do understand that makes you quite the rare breed?” Dan knows better than to mistake it for a question, but he nods anyway. “Transfer between the two in either direction is unusual, but the way _you_ went… It’s practically unheard of.”

And there it is again, the nagging in the back of his mind that he can’t quite name. Something he had felt but not even recognized feeling when Atherton first opened their mouth. A sense that there is something… _more,_ there. Just beneath the surface. A puzzle piece that fell under the table and somehow is now nowhere to be seen. 

“Unless I’ve pegged you all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a transfer made by choice…?”

“Oh, I assure you,” Dan snorts, “I was a model cog in the customs machine.”

_“Was,”_ Atherton parrots, a grin pulling their black lips taut. Dan swallows a hard mouthful of his drink.

“Was.” He sighs. As he continues to watch, the server drops a glass behind the transparent door of its silver metal-caged dispensary and begins to whir softly as, a moment later, the first of its spouts begins to fill the glass with yellow-orange liquid. “You’re really not going to let me go without more than that, huh? Surely you–” Here his eyes sweep pointedly over the delicate features, the soft edges, the long limbs that are currently folded in on themselves. “–aren’t in want of company?”

“Perhaps not,” Atherton says, a rumble from their throat like a purr punctuating the end of the phrase. The server finishes mixing its drink and the door slides open so they can remove it—which they do, stirring a metal straw until the yellow and orange combine into muddy amber. With that, they wave away the server, which whirs off to some other part of the room. “But _you_ seem to be. And I must admit, my curiosity has been piqued, Dan-who-was-Customs. You weren’t demoted, you’re _not_ an adrenaline junkie–”

A correct guess again. _Was it really a guess?_ Dan doesn’t even try to deny it. He still gets a little thrill out of deviating from his standard coffee routine. The boldest choice he’s made in the last week was synthesizing a shot of caramel rather than vanilla on a whim when getting his first cup yesterday morning.

“Hardly,” he says. “Missed the Etemenanki Treaty by about a week. I haven’t seen any Transport action outside of peacetimes. And don’t get me wrong, I hope that remains the case.”

“As do I,” Atherton says, granting him perhaps the first look he’s gotten of anything real in the weight of their voice and the little crease just between their white eyebrows. “But that still begs the question–” 

“Why did an Alliance desk monkey leave a cozy job of evaluating psyche-indices in favor of the dirty, noisy, chaotic work of nannying twelve kids through supply runs at the edge of the Cancer system?”

“Something like that.” Atherton grins. A note of surprise leaks through the pitch of their voice, through their raised eyebrows. “A Slug, then? Well, well, I _certainly_ didn’t peg you as the type for kids.”

“The selectivity of your knowledge about Alliance affairs continues to astound,” Dan says with a sigh that’s also a chuckle.

“I believe we _are_ sitting in the same backwater Spacer bar. I’ve been around some. So? Tell me.” 

Both of Atherton’s elbows find the top of the table and their fingers lace together in a bridge that their chin moves to sit atop. Their rabbit ears – and possibly their first pair as well, although Dan can’t see those as well beneath the thick curtain of hair – perk up, stretching towards the ceiling.

“I don’t know what there is to tell.” Dan shrugs. “I… have somewhat of a background of dealing with kids. My sister Esee– Well, let’s just say a month spent with a Platoon, even when there are twelve of them, doesn’t compare to 20 years raising one kid on your own.”

“I’m sorry,” Atherton says. And means it. Dan shrugs. The foam has melted back into his drink and it’s already beginning to go flat, which is disappointing. You’d think they would have invented some way to keep that from happening in this day and age. But then again, if it weren’t lost, there would be nothing worth savoring. 

“After the last embargo, our parents… Well, we’re still here.” 

Well, he’s _here._ Esee has a steady job in statistics and a gig teaching algebraic topology on the side over on Dagon **.** The last time he saw her without lightyears and a screen between them was at her wedding nearly three and a half years ago. It was her wife’s work as a quantum physicist that took them away from Earth in the first place and – while the distance plus Dan’s newfound tendency to not keep his feet on the ground for more than a few short weeks at a time is the perfect recipe for long gaps between – he _knows_ she’s happy. And he couldn’t be more proud of the woman he’s watched her grow into. He wouldn’t trade any of it. Not for all the money and power in the world.

Besides, now he’s got his Platoon to fuss over. He glances behind him to where a few of them sit now at the table with the rest of his crew. The rest of them who are present, anyway. More than half of the kids are still back on the ship with their Navigator One and the discorporate members of the crew. Quni had physically recoiled when the Captain first announced the plan to make their current pitstop, making it more than clear he was offended by the mere suggestion of eating anything that he didn’t make himself. Jexin Reteris had tried hard to dissuade the whole platoon from coming along for Dan’s sake; he’d focused the conversation on the cheap bar sushi and foie gras they would no doubt be subjected to, as well as making it _abundantly_ clear that not a drop of alcohol would find its way to any of them. And yet, even with the threat of an evening’s worth of droll adult conversation, they had ended up with four stragglers. 

Dan could have put his foot down. Could have _made_ them stay. But he’d just laughed at the distress in Jexin’s expression when faced with their insistence and agreed to let them have their way this time. Looking now at where Sible and Caral sit across from him, hanging off their Captain’s every word, he knows he made the right choice. Caral’s little hero crush on Jexin has never been subtle – not that Dan can _really_ blame him. But they’re all good kids. Even if he _did_ catch Duck trying to sneak marbles into the discorporate headset when she thought no one was looking.

And while he certainly appreciates the night off, the rest of the crew’s attempt to give him a moment of peace and quiet – or what was _meant_ to be one, at least – he can never completely turn off every part of his brain that is normally so focused on his kids. Even now, he wonders what they’re up to, and just how murderous a Navigator One he’s going to return to. He would be lying if he said he didn’t miss them at least a little bit. 

“Believe it or not, I didn’t start as a Slug.”

“Is that so?” There’s something amusing in the way that Atherton leans in, sipping their drink through the metal straw, and how closely it echoes Caral’s posture just a handful of tables away. “Funny. As hard as it was to picture you as a Slug – at least _before_ – it’s nearly impossible to see you in any other role.”

“Yeah,” Dan says. His chuckle is flat and even he can hear the way his voice shakes on a sigh. “When I first quit Customs, I only knew that I wanted to be on a ship. No, I _had_ to be on a ship. I couldn’t live like I had been; not anymore. I had to get out there – out _here._ Whether that meant a remote warehouse orbiting Phobetor or a cold Stellarcenter off of a frozen gas giant, or– or _wherever._ It didn’t matter. But I hadn’t exactly been _trained_ for Transport. Or ever stepped foot on a ship – well, not one that wasn’t grounded.”

“So you didn’t know where you’d fit in,” Atherton says, voice soft. Their ears bend, drooping almost, in a way that Dan hasn’t seen until now. A way he might not have thought they _could_ without having seen it with his own eyes. It’s a stark contrast to everything he’s seen of them so far – their every smooth, confident movement, the seemingly eternal uptick to their lips, the glint in their eye that knows too much. “I’m afraid I understand that feeling far more than I’d like.” 

“Right.” His throat feels tight. “I only knew I couldn’t be a pilot. I don’t have what it takes for that – don’t think any amount of time in a den would give me those skills. And I’m a bit… _attached_ to having a physical form.” Even with two years spent on and off of ships under his belt, he’s still not _entirely_ used to sharing such close quarters with the constant, sometimes invisible, presence of the discorporate Observers. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t just a _bit_ grateful that _Alacrity_ ’s tend to stick to the ship’s graveyard more often than not. Sure he wouldn’t mind continuing his new life of spacefaring from beyond the grave, but he’d rather save that option for a time when he has little to no other choice.

“That just leaves–” Atherton’s nose crinkles and if their cosmetisurgery didn’t make them look so much like a rabbit already, that one action alone might have done it. _“No…_ Really?” 

“Really,” Dan says with a grimace. “Navigator Three.” 

“You were…” A pause. “What of your one and two?” 

Dan shakes his head. Sometimes at night he still thinks of them. The tufts of Lansi’s short cropped brown hair that would always puff out above her ears after she first woke up. He’d loved trying to tame them, watching the single dimple in her left cheek as she’d laugh or smile and bat at his hands. The only thing quicker than her mind had been her hands. No matter if the problem was in her mind or in her hands, she could take it apart and put it back together faster than some would take to even find it. 

And Illa. At one point not so long ago, he would have sworn he’d felt nothing softer than her skin. The roughness of her voice, the loud firecracker of her laugh, had always been a perfect contrast to her bottomless kindness. Still, for him and Lansi, **s** he’d always been ready with a sharp wit and an even sharper grin whenever she successfully made them laugh. Which was often.

The psyche-indices had lined up. A near perfect three-way match in the eyes of the system. But in the end– 

He can’t name any particular moments, any specific issues. At a point, things started to fall apart. At another point, they finished doing so. That’s all there is to it. He was tripled and then he wasn’t. He was deeply involved – romantically, emotionally, and in every way between – with two other people who should have– could have– _did_ become his entire world. And then he wasn’t. 

It’s not as bad as it might have been. He’s heard the stories; before, during the war, they were far too common. Triples who lost one partner or, even worse, _two,_ to whatever cruel twists of fate befell them beyond the safety of gravity. At least he can live knowing that they do too. And while sometimes he still sits and wonders how different he might have felt knowing that all three of them had parted ways rather than the reality – that it’s now _Lansi-and-Illa… and him, just him, who could no longer be Them –_ he thinks he’s mostly glad that they still have each other.

It’s just him who still has a hole somewhere in the heart of him like a missing lung.

Well. He would have made a shit Navigator anyway. He never did have Esee’s mind for numbers.

He doesn’t tell Atherton about any of that. Not Illa’s dark freckles or the natural points to Lansi’s canines. The only thing he says, after a long… _long_ drink of his cocktail is, “It didn’t work out.”

“I’m sorry,” Atherton says. The warmth of their fingers against the back of his hand, just a barely-there brush of skin against skin, brings him back from the edge of staring down into that black hole. From falling too far in. “I can’t begin to imagine.”

A wry laugh. “Neither could I, once,” Dan says, raising the gaze he hadn’t noticed he’d lowered. “Back when I _was_ Customs, if you’d told me– Let’s just say I have a better understanding of those kinds of relationships now. And lots of regrets about the way I once thought.” 

“The two often come hand in hand,” Atherton says. Although Dan knows they can’t be very old – younger than _him,_ certainly – in this moment, they seem to be. He can’t help but feel the burden of inexperience; so much of his life before this – antlered strangers in Spacer bars and a dozen kids that are his own even without relation and yes even the squeezing of his heart, even the depths of the black hole – so much of his time seems to have been wasted. Atherton on the other hand… _A missing puzzle piece._

“If only we could have known then what we do now. Isn’t that always the case?” 

**_“_ ** _When the future comes it is always now. And only now may we ask of it, ‘What has been?’”_

Dan starts, and his twitching causes Atherton’s hand to retreat. His skin feels colder in an instant. 

“Rydra Wong,” he says softly, the corners of his mouth already twitching up. “That’s from Rydra Wong.” 

“Yes,” Atherton says with a smile. “She’s quite the prolific one; I have found myself on more than a single occasion taking from her words in order to reflect on myself. Although I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I have only just recently picked up her work, despite her overwhelming popularity.” 

“Don’t be,” Dan says quickly. _“Towers of Glass_ is her best work yet. It hooked a lot of people in for the first time. That and her more recent… _fame.”_

“Yes, well,” Atherton says. “I must admit to having felt somewhat obligated to make an attempt at it after meeting her.”

“You’ve met–!” Dan clamps his teeth shut over his tongue, steadying his glass after he caught its corner against the back of his hand when he’d jerked forward in his excitement. He glances around them. Sible is looking in his direction, but they return to facing Jexin after a moment, seemingly determining that whatever is happening at his table isn’t interesting enough to hold their attention. Dan leans closer across the table, towards white eyebrows reaching for a white hairline. At a much more carefully regulated volume, he says, “You’ve met _Rydra Wong?”_

“I have. Not two months ago, I think,” Atherton answers, looking pensive. They bite at their bottom lip, white against black. “Yes, that’s about right. It was… an _enlightening_ encounter. I don’t know that I’ve ever found myself in such close company with someone so high on the Alliance’s wanted list.”

Dan only just turns his barking laugh into a snort before it bursts out of him, one hand flying up to cover the grin that he can already feel pulling at his cheeks.

“And? How did you find her?”

“Highly dangerous and unpredictable due to her unstable mental state – I believe that’s the _official_ stance the Alliance has taken in regards to her?” Atherton says, expression impressively serious. At least for a moment. “I can see why. To put it bluntly she’s, well, brilliant. Of course the Administration isn’t a fan; they don’t tend to think very highly of those who ask the right kinds of questions and encourage others to as well.” 

“No.” Dan’s voice is quiet; he takes a sobering swig of his drink. “They wouldn’t, would they?”

He remembers when he’d first heard the reports. Shock. Outrage. Despair. _Rydra Wong,_ an enemy of the Alliance. Leading a group of outlaws who had stolen a ship right out from under Headquarters’s nose. He’d convinced himself for a long time that there must have been some mistake. Until he had started to hear the rumors. _The truth about the Invaders._ That’s what people were starting to say, to whisper in hushed tones. _Victims on both sides. What the Alliance doesn’t want you to know._

Six months after Dan himself had played his last tiny, insignificant part in helping her. – _A small, inconspicuous package handed over to the care of a doctor. He rolls his shoulder unconsciously, feeling the way the tiny dragon in the cage where his shoulder joint once was flickers its wings, still hidden entirely under his clothes. It’s easy as breathing; easier even. He moves it just to feel it move._ – Six months nearly to the _day,_ the war had ended. Rydra Wong should have been lauded as a hero. The woman by whose hands, or rather by whose _tongue_ the war had finally reached its end. Instead– Grimacing, he shakes his head.

Her past success as an author and poet—and the spotlight it landed her in long before the Alliance’s attempts to denounce her—are her saving grace, Dan knows. Maybe he doesn’t know about math, but he _does_ know a thing or two about the Alliance and about sweeping things under the rug. As much as they might want her out of their way, actually bringing her in – or worse – puts them at too great a risk of alienating the public who in some ways already begin to grow restless. Or even beyond that, in the worst possible outcome for them, they risk making her a martyr. So at least for now they can’t touch her. She’s safe.

But still sometimes he worries… 

Atherton is quiet. He can’t help but feel that their thoughts have taken a direction that’s nearly the same. He raises his glass to take a sip of his drink, only realizing when he has to tip the glass back farther than he’d expected just how close to empty it is. When he puts it down again, it is to find Atherton staring at him from across the table with a furrow in their brow. Their mouth opens and then closes again, and the pause stretches on. For a minute, there is just the background hum of conversation, a far-distant melody from a speaker set into the far wall, seemingly the only one that is playing anything at all, and the irregular beat of clinking glassware.

Finally, with a pseudo-nod that Dan knows was not meant for him, Atherton speaks, prying their white-knuckled grip loose from the edge of the table.

“You were wondering how I knew you were Customs?” they say. And Dan is _certain_ he never voiced that thought. It might have been easy to guess, sure, but he thinks he’s starting to see the answer, the missing piece– “I looked at you sitting here when I first arrived and saw–” Atherton says something, rambling off the phonemes in quick succession, at least a dozen of them. And all in less than a second.

He doesn’t understand all of it, and the gaps in his knowledge are glaring – spots of radio static that ring loud between his ears. But, suddenly, with nothing more than that, he can see back in time to minutes ago. A near-perfect picture of himself as seen through Atherton’s rose gold eyes. _Red hair that had just recently begun to grow out, hands that were soft in a way that indicated soft work, hesitation in the lines of his face, the way his eyes had moved around the room, unfamiliar but in a way that showed… something. A sense that this was all new. That he was New._

“Babel-18,” he says.

“So you _do_ know of it.” A fire lights in Atherton’s eyes, one he thinks must match the way he’d looked when he had first heard Rydra’s name. “The truth is, Rydra Wong came to me first. I’m a linguist. I had been studying the language since long before I met the woman responsible for it. In an incredible act of coincidence – or, what I might have thought was such once. Before I knew better – she came to teach me about Babel-18. _More_ about it. All she asked in exchange was that I spread it where I could.”

“It’s something else.” Dan shakes his head. _“She’s_ something else. You know, I owe Rydra, well… my _life,_ really. My current life at any rate. If I had never met her, I would still be hiding behind a datapad somewhere just down the road from Alliance Headquarters.”

“Yes, it does seem that Rydra has a habit of altering the lives of all who encounter her. Just take that partner of hers, for example. Who would have suspected a man such as that… He’s called the _Butcher._ And yet I have hardly entertained more polite, interesting, and genuinely _kindly_ company.”

Atherton chuckles to themself with the look of someone who is present not only in front of you but also within the confines of a memory, basking in its pleasant warmth. Dan blinks across at them, tilting his head to one side. 

_“Partner,”_ he repeats. The Alliance reports had contained mention of her crew of so-called _traitors,_ but of course it hadn’t elaborated upon any of those relationships with any more specificity than that. He breaks into a sudden, fierce grin. “Good for her.” 

The quiet of reflection hangs in the air. Dan taps his fingers slowly against the side of the glass in his hand without purpose. The dragon still in its cage hidden beneath his clothes twitches just for something to do. 

“You _know,”_ Atherton says, something low and smooth in their voice that Dan finds himself trying – and failing – to think about in Babel-18. He knows the right words for it are there, somewhere; there’s _so much_ more he could grasp if only he had them. “There are rooms available for rent here as well. I’ve paid for one myself for the night; it’s just a short speed ramp ride out the back door. If you wanted to spend a night outside of a ship… Well, you’re welcome to join me.”

Just the tip of Atherton’s rosy pink tongue emerges to wet their black lips in a long, slow swipe. The corner of their mouth is twisted up into a smirk below long, thick eyelashes that flutter over a newly intense shine in that rose-gold gaze. Even Dan doesn’t need the use of Babel-18 to understand the insinuation. The tips of his ears start to grow hot.

“I–I um…” The voice inside his head stutters for an answer even as he twists in his chair, working more on instinct than anything else, to cast a glance back at the table where his crew still sits. With near-perfect timing, Jexin looks up and catches his eye, almost as if directly in response to his movement. Jexin flashes him a sunny grin that lights up his violet eyes, raising a hand in a half wave. That’s more than enough to flood Dan with a wave of warmth, and calm follows close on its heels. It’s easier than anything to offer Jexin a smile in return. Then again, that’s always the truth.

He takes a steadying breath and turns back to Atherton. This time the words come easy. “Thank you, but–”

“Ah.” Atherton glances from Dan to Jexin and then back again. “I see.” 

Dan’s flush spreads to the rest of his face. He grumbles something under his breath, casting about for a rapid subject change. The closest thing he sees is a server hovering nearby and he waves it over, hoping at least to be able to hide behind its console screen. He’s had practice at that, after all. And at the very least, he should probably stop drinking before he does something to _really_ make a fool of himself.

Atherton snickers and reaches out to pat Dan’s hand comfortingly. “No offense taken,” they say, a response to the excuses Dan hasn’t yet made. At least not out loud. “It was no more than a friendly offer. I would have thought nothing different of either your acceptance or refusal. I believe this is an opportune chance for me to retire, however. I have little enough time before I must set out again as it is.”

They sigh in a way that is perhaps the _only_ sound resembling anything other than excitement or curiosity that Dan has heard from them since they first sat down. He barely hears it. The server has stopped in front of him and he has since pulled up his own tab only to find that the meagre amount had already been paid. And there, at the bottom – a signature and the associated name recorded in a much more readable font. 

“Atherton _Rylan.”_ Dan blinks at the screen and then back up at the name’s owner who has just finished pushing their chair in. Their ears turn in his direction before their head follows, now sporting a tight-lipped smile. “Of the Rylan Fusion Company. Your father– You’re the heirling to– Holy shit. You _made_ my ship.”

“Not personally. Afraid I’ve always been better at putting together morphemes than state of the art quasar engines and fusion cores.” Dan is still gaping when Atherton’s hand reaches forward. He’d seen them reach to the side just a few moments earlier and had initially assumed they were just adjusting their fingerless gloves. It seems though that they were reaching _for_ something, presumably in one of the pouches at their belt. Namely the thin, transparent card they hand him now. “I assume you’ve taken psyche-indices before? Well, this won’t give you that information, but it _does_ contain what you need to know in order to contact me on all available channels. In other words, I’m _guaranteed_ to answer one way or another. If you ever find yourself in a tight spot– or hell, if you ever notice we’re in the same area and want to grab a drink, let me know.”

Dan takes the card, staring at the gold detailing and the deep-inscribed lines encoding a whole wealth of information that he’s able to hold in the palm of his hand and that flash chromatic when they catch the light. With his other hand, he reaches for his glass, only noticing when he brings it to his mouth that it’s empty. He puts it down, instead looking up once again at _Atherton Rylan_ standing just on the other side of the table from him. He feels like he might reopen his tab. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Dan is aware of the familiar trod of Jexin’s boots as he makes his way over, but he can’t be bothered to pay it much mind at the moment.

“Don’t lose that,” Atherton says, picking up their glass and chugging the amber liquid still filling the bottom quarter of it all in one go. It lands back on the table with a thunk. A wink later, they turn and then Dan is left watching the back of their sleek black jacket as they walk away, only glancing behind them to call, “Thanks for the drink, Customs.” 


End file.
